GLI3 and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma: To further elucidate the expression of GLI3 in ESCC, the result of TCGA database revealed that there was no difference in GLI3 expression between ESCA samples and normal samples (Fig. 2D), in which there was no difference between EAC samples and normal samples (Supplementary Fig. 1), however, significant difference was found in ESCC samples and normal samples from TCGA database (Fig. 2E),which was further confirmed by GEO dataset in 7 cases of ESCC tissues and paired normal tissues (Fig. 2F).